Humor and laughter are vital and effective ways to calm down, relieve stress, and connect with others. Let’s look at 4 rules for managing stress through laughter.
Discourage
The first thing we can do when starting to manage stress is to try to eliminate the factors of the experience. Try making a list of 10 things that annoy you, and then think about how you can get rid of the maximum number of items on the list.
For example, you may be worried about your job, your spouse, the pandemic, and your morning routine. You may not want to quit your job or your husband, but you can definitely start checking the news less often and ask your husband to help with your morning chores.
Giving up stressors may seem ridiculous, but it’s an important step in stress management. Plus, making a list like this can be fun. For example, you could make a “To Donʼt” list rather than a “To Do” list, listing what you will no longer do.
Rethink
Humor plays an important role in rethinking stressors. Chances are you can’t get rid of everything that makes you anxious. Instead, you can reframe those factors. Try to look at the problem from a different perspective. This won’t make the problem go away, but it will allow you to laugh at it.
For example, when the author’s mom was diagnosed with cancer, she said it was a way to get a free breast augmentation. It didn’t make the disease disappear, but the joke allowed her to laugh at a difficult situation and take it easier.
You can also make the morning routine more exciting by turning it into a game. For example, the author’s three-year-old daughter used to exhaust him in the mornings until he turned morning pick-up into a game. Now she has to eat breakfast, brush her teeth, get dressed, and let the author comb her hair before she can watch cartoons. If she’s slacking, no cartoons.
Release
Let the really bad things stay bad, and give yourself a break from them. Take a walk, draw, take a hot bubble bath, do breathing exercises, meditate, or watch cat videos.
Keep a journal of things that make you laugh. It doesn’t matter what your temper is – something is sure to make you laugh.
Rest
Go on vacation and not worry about anything. Instead of traveling, try taking breaks that will help refresh your mind. Travel using Google Maps, find ways to relax at home.
And rest doesn’t have to take a few weeks or a couple weekends – you can break your work day into intervals and take a 5 minute break every 25 minutes. If you can laugh in those 5 minutes, the rest will be more effective.